Our system has found that you are using an ad-blocking browser add-on.

We just wanted to let you know that our site content is, of course,
available to you absolutely free of charge.

Our ads are the only way we have to be able to bring you the latest
high-quality content, which is written by professional journalists,
with the help of editors, graphic designers, and our site production
and I.T. staff, as well as many other talented people who work around the clock
for this site.

So, we ask you to add this site to your Ad Blocker’s "white list" or
to simply disable your Ad Blocker while visiting this site.

JPMorgan Chase is investigating a possible cyberattack. The banking giant is cooperating with law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to understand what data hackers may have obtained in the attack, according to a Reuters report.

JPMorgan declined to comment, but company spokeswoman Trish Wexler told Reuters the bank is moving to safeguard sensitive or confidential information. No unusual fraud activity has been discovered so far.

The FBI said it was working with the Secret Service "to determine the scope of recently reported cyberattacks against several American financial institutions."

No Way to Completely Avoid Attacks

Aviv Raff, CTO and chief researcher at advanced-threat protection firm Seculert told us that while the motivation behind the attack against JPMorgan Chase is unknown, it is known that gigabytes of sensitive data were stolen.

"Much like the Target breach, where over 11 gigabytes of private data was stolen, the JPMorgan breach shows again that there is no way to 100 percent prevent an attack," Raff said. "It's up to the to use the best tools to detect the compromised devices as soon as possible, before the data is stolen and the incident becomes a breach."

We also turned to TK Keanini, CTO at network security firm Lancope, to get some additional insight. He told us it's no longer a game of not being infiltrated -- it is a game of detecting hackers and shutting them down before they can exfiltrate or advance their operations.

Keanini offered a physical bank robbery analogy: It is not about breaking into the bank -- it is about getting out and being able to spend the loot without being detected.

What's the Enterprise Solution?

"Financial institutions like JP Morgan have a readiness for these types of incidents that are the best in the industry," Keanini said. "The fact that business continuity was not an issue and that they are working with law enforcement to catch the crooks is exactly the pattern you want to see."

From Keanini's perspective, this is what good incident response looks like from the outside. Depending on how the investigation plays out, he said, we may or may not get more details but we will have to wait and see.

"The pattern here is state of the art and will repeat itself until it is no longer effective for the attackers," he said. "Once these attackers have credentials to internal systems, they no longer set off traditional security alarms because these detection methods are watching for bad things to happen and for weeks and months, they just operate as that user and no violations are triggered."

Keanini's conclusion: The solution is to employ complementary forms of detection like anomaly detection methods that can detect when this user's behavior has changed significantly or suspicious connections are made.